Even as President Obama vowed last week that he’s “a strong believer” in the free market, he and his DC pals were moving to undermine it.

The most troubling sign: The Wall Street Journal’s story about a Federal Reserve plan to play a role in setting pay for tens of thousands of bank workers nationwide.

That alone makes hair stand on end.

But Americans might have shuddered — or scratched their heads, anyway — even as Obama was giving his big speech on the need for financial regulation. “We’ve worked closely with leaders in the Senate and the House,” the president said — singling out his “good friend” Mass. Rep. Barney Frank and Conn. Sen. Chris Dodd. “And we intend to pass regulatory reform through Congress.”

With those two at the helm, we’re dreading “reform.”

But what of the president’s “love” for free markets? “I believe that jobs are best created not by government, but by businesses and entrepreneurs willing to take a risk on a good idea,” he said.

In fact, the Fed’s plan to intercede in the bank-pay decision-making process is prompted precisely by the recognition that too many institutions took too much risk — triggering the financial crisis.

There’s truth in that, of course.

But the free-market answer is not to have government bureaucrats decide which risks are worthy and which are not. It’s to allow folks to place their bets as they wish, and let the chips fall where they may — without committing the taxpayers to making good on the bettors’ losses.

Instead, the past year has shown that US policy is merely to bless good risks — and bail out bad ones. And so far, alas, there’s been little coming from Obama & Co. suggesting any change in that.

Meanwhile, the role of Frank and Dodd in “fixing” America’s financial woes is hardly reassuring.

Frank, if you’ll recall, is the scandal-ridden chairman of the House Financial Services Committee who was caught sleeping at the switch when the system came crashing down.

It was Frank who pushed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make tons of risky home loans to people who had no chance of paying them off — setting the stage for the financial crisis.

Even in the fatal runup to the mortgage meltdown, he said Fannie and Freddie were “fundamentally sound financially and [can] withstand . . . disaster scenarios,” and kept reassuring the public that a federal takeover of the companies was impossible — until it, um, happened.

Then he pushed for the big bailouts, and never mind the higher taxes.

Dodd, meanwhile, was also caught fiddling while the economy burned.

Then came revelations of his sweetheart deal — the two below-market-rate mortgages he got from Countrywide Financial, one of the biggest culprits in the housing crisis, and one of the firms Dodd’s Senate Banking Committee was charged with regulating.

And besides, what does it say about Obama’s free-market love when the government is looking to take over health care, and has already swept up the financial and auto markets — and seems to be just getting started?